Bob Frantz: Josh Gordon has no right to criticize anyone's judgment

Maribeth Joeright/MJoeright@News-Herald.com
Cleveland Browns Josh Gordon is tackled by Steelers' Ike Taylor after catching a pass in the fourth quarter, Sunday, at FirstEnergy Stadium. Gordon scored the Browns only touchdown of the game.

“I’d like to apologize to my teammates, coaches, the Cleveland Browns organization and our fans,” Josh Gordon said Aug. 27 in a statement released by the NFL Players Association. “I am very disappointed that the NFL and its hearing office didn’t exercise better discretion and judgment in my case.”
Before you read on, let’s just let that last sentence sink in for a moment. Read it again. Ponder it.
Josh Gordon is disappointed in someone else’s discretion and judgment.
He really said that.
Or at least some publicist in the NFLPA office said it for him — which actually makes it even more ridiculous.
Gordon has been exercising horrendous discretion and judgment for virtually his entire football career. From his multiple drug violations in college starting in 2010 — violations that got him booted from the Baylor team and subsequently cost him a chance to suit up for Utah — to his third strike at the NFL level since joining the Browns through the 2012 supplemental draft, it has been clear that nothing was going to stop this man from using illicit substances.
Getting kicked off his college team wasn’t going to stop him.
Losing his scholarship wasn’t going to stop him.
Being busted as a rookie and placed into the NFL’s drug program wasn’t going to stop him.
The two-game suspension he served in 2013 for his second offense wasn’t going to stop him.
Even the prospect of a multi-million-dollar contract extension after leading the league in receiving yards wasn’t enough to stop him.
By a show of hands, does anyone honestly think this indefinite suspension from the league, which will last for a minimum of one year before he can apply for reinstatement, is going to stop him?
Me either.
Yet this man, who has had countless opportunities to put his life and career back together after multiple missteps, is disappointed in the “discretion and judgment” of the NFL and the independent arbitrator who upheld his banishment from the league.
Words fail.
Browns’ fans don’t want to hear this, but the truth is that the league did exactly what it was supposed to do.
How could they do anything else? The drug policies have been made perfectly clear to the players for years, and even the recently relaxed public attitude toward marijuana does not change the fact that the federal government still lists it as an illegal drug, as do 48 individual states. As such, it is appropriately banned by the NFL.
Even so, the enforcement and deterrence policies are hardly Draconian. Players are not even punished at all for their first offense with illicit substances; they are simply entered into a treatment and testing program.
A second offense launches the player into “stages of intervention,” which include more frequent testing and can result in up to a four-game suspension, which Gordon received last year before having it knocked down to two games on appeal.
It isn’t until the third stage that a player can receive the indefinite ban that Gordon earned.
With NFL glory staring him in the face after a season for the ages, and stacks of money higher than he could ever fathom just waiting to be earned, Gordon was unable or unwilling to stay away from marijuana.
Even if you buy the oft-repeated “secondhand smoke” defense he offered up this time around, then he is guilty of far worse “discretion and judgment” than he accused the league of having, because he even refused to stay away from the types of people who would jeopardize his future by smoking pot around him.
Angry fans were furiously venting on Aug. 27, taking to social media to once again compare the year-long punishment received by Gordon to the two-game suspension handed to Baltimore’s Ray Rice after pleading guilty to domestic violence.
“A guy knocks his wife unconscious and gets 2 games,” they shout in capital letters, “and a guy who smokes some weed gets a full year?”
As I wrote two weeks ago in this space, such comparisons are foolish.
Certainly, Rice’s offense should have been treated for more seriously by the league than it was. The two-game ban is insulting to victims of domestic violence everywhere, and the league should be ashamed. Rice’s case, however, should have no bearing whatsoever on Gordon’s situation.
Gordon wasn’t banned for a year because somebody stumbled upon him smoking weed for the first time. He wasn’t “unlucky.” Gordon has systematically abused the anti-drug policies at both the NCAA and NFL levels for years, and his refusal to comply with the rules finally caught up to him.
If anyone has the right to be angry, it’s Browns general manager Ray Farmer and Coach Mike Pettine. They have stood by Gordon through all his problems, knowing full-well the trouble began long before they arrived in Cleveland, and they have had to deal with all the distractions and personnel repercussions that came with not knowing if Gordon would be eligible to play.
If anyone has the right to be angry, it’s Brian Hoyer. Less than two weeks after being named the Browns’ starter, Hoyer now has to commandeer an offense missing its most talented playmaker.
If anyone has the right to be angry, it’s Browns fans. Not at the NFL for following its established rules — but at Gordon for repeatedly thumbing his nose at those rules, costing their favorite team one of its best players.
The one person who has no right to be angry — and no right to question someone else’s discretion and judgment — is Gordon.Reach the author at frantz.media@yahoo.com and follow Bob on Twitter: @BobFrantz80